Ashes of the unspeakable, p.22
Ashes of the Unspeakable, page 22
“After what we’ve seen, I feel a lot safer knowing that there are good people with guns, too, and not only the bad guys,” Jim said.
Nearing the roadblock, they could see that the four lanes coming into the T-intersection from each direction had been narrowed down to two. Concrete jersey barriers acted as funnels. Deputies in orange safety vests and tactical gear manned the checkpoint. They appeared to only be checking the few vehicles that were moving. As this was a rural area, there was no use trying to check foot traffic because most people would not use the road. If they were on foot, they would use shortcuts, side roads, and hunting trails.
The big tractor pulled into the chute of concrete barriers, and a deputy held up his hand to stop them. His insignia indicated that he was a Tazewell County deputy. He held a full-auto H&K MP5. Jim always wondered how these small counties that could barely afford to pay and insure their teachers could afford such expensive weapons.
Their driver killed his engine. “Howdy boys, been to the flea market, and I’m heading back home now.”
The deputy came closer and scanned the group on the trailer. “You got more folks now than when you left,” he commented.
“We brought back some hitchhikers,” the driver said. “One’s going into town with us. The other two are headed into Russell County.”
The deputy came closer, staring at the three. “You guys look like shit.”
“We feel like shit, too,” Jim said. “We walked all the way back from Richmond.”
“Fair enough,” the deputy replied. “What’s Richmond like?”
“We got out of there pretty quickly,” Gary said. “But the interstate is like a war zone.”
The deputy assessed them. “You guys don’t look that dangerous. How’d you make it through that?”
“The fact that we’re here should tell you something,” Randi replied.
The deputy considered this, then nodded and waved them through. “Take it easy, badasses. I ain’t sure you’ll find home any safer. Some places around here are turning into war zones.”
That was not encouraging. The tractor pulled through the intersection, turned right, and then pulled over to the side of the road once they were clear of the barricades.
Jim shook Gary’s hand. “Thanks, my friend. I couldn’t have got this far without you.”
“Same here,” Gary said. “Thanks for everything.”
Randi dropped her gear and came rolling in from the side. She hugged Gary, nearly knocking him over. “Thank you, Gary. You made it much easier to tolerate this guy,” she said, gesturing toward Jim. “He can be a jerk.”
“The meter is running,” the driver reminded them. “I’ve got places to go and people to bother.”
Gary jumped back on the wagon. “Let’s go. Maybe I’ll get home in time for dinner.”
Jim and Randi thanked the driver as he drove away. As the tractor moved away from them, an odd feeling of loneliness crept over the pair. It was like separation anxiety. After an intense period on the road, sharing every moment together, losing one of their group was disturbing. The three becoming two would take some getting used to. They turned away from the receding tractor and shouldered their loads. It was quiet now, just the two of them and a pair of deputies manning the checkpoint. There were no more moving vehicles and no foot traffic. The sun was getting lower in the sky. They needed to move. They were racing daylight.
When they moved toward their road, one of the deputies called to them. “Where you guys headed right now? You ain’t going to make it as far as Lebanon tonight, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“We’re headed to the mental health agency by the college,” Jim said. “We both work there. We thought we might find an office we could stay in for the night and then head to Lebanon in the morning.”
The deputy walked closer to them. “Be careful down there. Any place that might have any type of drugs stored there has been broken into and looted. You all dispense meds, don’t you?”
“Some,” Randi replied.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “If it’s a drug, people are stealing it. The college next door to your office has been turned into an emergency shelter. Things are a little crazy down there now. They don’t really have much food or anything so people are living there and foraging for what they can find. We don’t have enough cops to help out with it.”
“The National Guard armory is by the college,” Jim said. “Are they helping out?”
The cop shook his head. “No, every unit in Southwest Virginia got pulled out. They’ve all been deployed to Northern Virginia to help those folks out.”
“What about our folks?” Randi asked.
The deputy slung his rifle over his shoulder and smiled. “We are the red-headed stepchild in this state. You guys should know that. Nobody cares what happens to the hillbillies in the coalfields.”
“No shit,” Randi said.
“Well, thanks for the information,” Jim said.
“No problem. You all be safe.”
Randi and Jim started walking. The five miles between them and the office seemed uneventful after the craziness of the past days. At times, the walk was even boring, but neither of them complained. They were in very familiar territory now. They passed the store where Randi bought cigarettes on her lunch break each day, the liquor store they both admitted to stopping at occasionally to buy a little something for the weekend. They passed the fast food joint where they bought lunch when they were in a hurry, the tractor dealership where Jim bought parts for his excavator and chains for his chainsaw. This wasn’t yet home, but it was damn close. Familiarity was an energizing thing.
*
The sun was below the horizon by the time they finally reached their office complex. The mental health agency where they both worked was basically in the middle of nowhere, on the highway between two small towns. Besides their agency, there was a community college and a National Guard armory located adjacent to each other, making for a large cluster of buildings all merging into what looked like one large campus. Their agency was among the first set of buildings they came to. They stood at the intersection staring toward the nearest building. It was a single-story brick office building that housed clinic services for the mentally ill and for substance abusers. They could see that the glass storefront had been completely demolished. It looked like someone had driven a car through it to gain access. They experienced a mixture of relief and anxiety seeing a place so familiar, yet uncertain if it was safe to proceed or not.
Randi’s office had been in this building. She shook her head as she stared at it. “I’m not going in there.”
“Me neither.”
One of the items under Jim’s umbrella in the structure of this agency was supervision of construction and maintenance. He could only imagine the nightmare that the repair of this facility would be, if reopening was ever an option. Realistically, it might not be. There might not be the money in the government anymore to operate large agencies such as this. He wondered what would happen to the mentally ill. Those that survived would probably be locked up in facilities like they were forty years ago. He knew the facilities would eventually reopen. The state of Virginia had had the first mental health facilities in the nation, going all the way back to 1773 in Williamsburg. There were a lot of social programs society could do without, but if mentally ill people were running around without treatment, everyone paid the price.
Jim started walking. “Let’s try the administrative building.”
Randi hesitated, then started walking toward the entrance of the clinical building. There were benches outside for visitors waiting for their appointments. As Randi walked toward the bench, Jim noticed the still form laying in the tall grass. The typically well-manicured grounds were tipping toward overgrown and the weeds obscured the body. By the time Jim got there, Randi was backing up, her hand over her mouth. He stared down at what Randi had found.
At their feet lay the body of an overweight man with unkempt hair, his glasses askew on his face. He’d slit his wrists with a pocketknife. A bright orange appointment card lay beside him.
“This guy has been coming here for over twenty years,” Randi said. “I remember him from back when I used to work clinics. He said we saved his life.”
“I guess he couldn’t face what was waiting for him when the meds ran out.”
Randi shook her head, turned, and walked away.
They found the administrative building in no better shape. Even though no drugs were kept there, it appeared to have made no difference to the vandals. The front windows had all been knocked out and the glass doors shattered.
“Do you want to go in?” Randi asked.
“Yes. The second floor would have been harder to access with no power. The elevator would be dead so they couldn’t get upstairs using it. The access control system is fail-secure, so the doors stays locked when the power goes off.”
“There might be other places we could stay if this building has been trashed, places that haven’t been broken into.”
“It’s not just about finding a safe place to hole up. We have a Continuity of Operations plan that requires us to store a few emergency supplies on site. I was responsible for buying and storing them. I know exactly what’s in there and we need to get to it. They’re stored in a locked cabinet behind a locked door. If that area is still secure, there will be some water and a few other supplies.”
“Lead the way,” Randi said.
Jim drew his pistol and held it ready. They carefully moved through the entrance area, crunching their way through granules of broken safety glass into the reception area. The sliding reception windows were also shattered. Jim stepped up to the counter and looked through the opening. Inside was chaos. Everything had been broken and vandalized.
“These weren’t just people searching for stuff,” Jim said. “These were just people breaking shit.”
“The cop said people were using the college as a shelter. Maybe the bored teens paid us a visit to blow off some steam.”
“You may be right. Or it may have been substance abusers pissed off about being court-ordered here for services.”
Jim turned away from the window and walked toward the seating area. The soft drink vending machine was overturned, and the front of the snack machine was shattered.
“You must have family in the area,” Randi jabbed. “The vending machine has been hit.”
“Funny.”
They walked the entire lower floor, which required headlamps after they left the windowed lobby area. The supply rooms and the break room, which were typically unlocked, were thoroughly ransacked. There were several offices that must have been unlocked because they were trashed as well. In the back of the building, they came upon an unmarked steel door in a dark corridor. Jim pushed on it, but it was locked. The door had a proximity reader beside it which required a person to hold their employee ID badge near the reader to unlock it. With the power dead, the door could only be unlocked with a key. Several dents in the door made it clear that someone had not been willing to accept this without a fight. It looked like the door had won. The lock had held.
“Don’t tell me you still have your keys?”
“Of course,” Jim said. “It’s habit.” He tucked his gun into his holster, reached into his pocket and withdrew a ring of keys. On the ring was the master key for the entire building. He slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The lock opened.
“Be very quiet in case someone’s up there,” Jim warned. “I don’t want to make it this far to get beaned by a desk stapler.”
They slipped through the door and Jim used the key to lock it back behind them. He drew his gun again and tracked his beam of light up the stairs. In contrast to the hallway they’d just left, there was no debris, which made Jim further certain that this floor might not have been breached. They carefully ascended the stairs and paused at the top landing. Jim listened but heard nothing. He used his key here, the door unlocked without a hitch, and they stepped through into the upper hallway.
They paused again, listening. Jim held his gun at the ready, still not ready to trust the feeling that they were the first to come up here since the disaster.
Randi leaned toward him. “This shit is spooky.”
“It’s only an office,” he said. “I’ve been here at night a lot, coming back from a trip or after a late meeting.”
Jim started walking, pausing frequently to listen for any sound. The upper hallway was a square, and they walked the entire perimeter, not seeing or hearing anything. Jim holstered his pistol.
“It looks like no one has been here,” he said.
“It’s getting dark. You think it’s safe to stay here?”
“I’m not sure anywhere is safe, but I’d be willing to give it a shot.”
They found an interior office that had no outside windows and dropped their gear. Jim spotted a scented candle and lighter on the desk. He lit it and the glow filled the room. “Alice must have missed this candle. It’s clearly a violation of policy.”
Randi sagged into the desk chair. “I’m starving. We didn’t even eat lunch today.”
“I know, but this floor is mostly women.”
Randi looked offended. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
Jim smiled. “Open the bottom desk drawer next to you.”
Randi leaned over and did as he asked. “Holy shit.”
“What did you find?”
“Peanut butter, crackers, a can of soup, tuna.” She placed each on the desk as she named them off.
“I bet you’ll find more if you check every woman’s office on this floor.”
“Give me your master key.”
“Let’s go open the door to my emergency supply closet. I’ll see what we can use out of there. While I’m going through it, you can use my key and check offices.”
*
In an hour, they were both eating soup and crackers purloined from the desks of coworkers and drinking bottled water from the emergency supply cabinet. The cabinet had held a battery-powered lantern, and Jim substituted that for the scented candle since the smell of Gardenia Colada was becoming overpowering and starting to give him a headache.
“If this office ever opens back up, these people are going to be mad about their food,” Randi said. “If they find out who ate it, I might not be able to set foot in this building again.”
“They’ll get over it. After all the crap that’s gone on, this should be the least of anyone’s problems.”
Randi was eating tomato soup and slightly stale oyster crackers. Jim was eating a thick beef soup with slightly stale saltines.
“I still can’t believe that you noticed all of these food stashes that people had in their desks.”
“It really was part of my emergency plan. If I ran out of food getting home, I would look for offices because there might be less chance of them already being looted than stores and restaurants. I would check breakrooms and desks for food. You have to notice and remember all these secondary sources of food because the primary sources could be wiped out before you get to them.”
They grew quiet as they finished their meals. Most evenings had been like this. There was a rush of activity when they reached where they were staying for the night as they attempted to set up a camp and get food in their bellies. With that done, there was nothing left to do but think, and that was always a black hole, sucking them down into darkness.
“You ever think about what happened to Alice and Rebecca?” Randi asked.
Jim set his bowl down beside him. “They made their decision, we made ours. They’re grown women.”
“I’m not talking about blame and decisions. I’m talking about what happened to them. Do you ever wonder if they’ve made it home already or if they’re still out there on the road somewhere?”
Jim finished his water and tossed the empty toward the trashcan. He missed. “I do wonder. I was thinking about leaving them a message here, just in case they come by. If they’re not home yet and they come down 460, they may stop here, like we did.”
“You can do it if you want,” Randi said. “I think I’m going to go clean up some. I don’t want to reach home looking like ten miles of bad road.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Jim said. “We could pour some bottled water into the sink in the bathrooms. After days of creek baths, it will seem like five star accommodations.”
Randi looked excited. “Is there enough water for that?”
“There’s cases in the emergency cabinet. Way more than we could ever carry with us. There’s also another of these lanterns. We could each take one. You’d be stuck with soap from the soap dispensers and drying with paper towels, but it’s still the best we’ve had in a while.”
“No shit,” Randi said. “Sign me up.”
They gathered their supplies and each of them headed to one of the staff restrooms. Despite the building being empty, habit drove each toward the bathroom of the appropriate gender – Jim to the men’s, Randi to the women’s. As office bathrooms typically did, theirs had a large wall-mounted mirror over the double sinks. When Jim placed his lantern on the vanity, he caught his reflection in the mirror and was stopped in his tracks. Although he had caught brief glances of his reflection in the shiny surface of car windows and other reflective materials over the past weeks, he had not been subjected to his current appearance in such stark detail as he was now.
They’d been on the road less than two weeks, but he appeared to have aged ten years in that time. He could not be sure if his appearance was really so different than it had been two weeks ago or if he just hadn’t paid much attention to himself before since he was looking in the mirror every day. The first thing he noticed was his eyes. Not only did they show significant aging since he’d last seen them, but there was a look in them that he was not sure he recognized. Not exactly a haunted look, but a different look. Looking back over his journey, it was very likely that he was not the same man who had started this trip. Every experience changes you, some more than others.
